Palin 'becoming Al Sharpton'?

Sarah Palin has played the sexism card, accusing critics of chauvinism against a strong woman. She has played the class card, dismissing the Bush family as “blue bloods” and complaining that she is the target of snobbery by people who dislike her simply because she is “not so hoity-toity.”

Most famously, she has played the victim card — never more vividly than when she invoked the loaded phrase “blood libel” against liberals and media commentators in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting.

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Palin’s flamboyant rhetoric always has thrilled supporters, but lately it is coming at a new cost: a backlash, not from liberals but from some of the country’s most influential conservative commentators and intellectuals. (Related: Sarah Palin charges critics with 'blood libel')

Palin’s politics of grievance and group identity, according to these critics, is a betrayal of conservative principles. For decades, it was a standard line of the right that liberals cynically promoted victimhood to achieve their goals and that they practiced the politics of identity — race, sex and class—over ideas. (Related: Republicans learn cost of attacking Palin)

Among those taking aim at Palin in recent interviews with POLITICO are George F. Will, the elder statesman of conservative columnists; Peter Wehner, a top strategist in George W. Bush’s White House, and Heather Mac Donald, a leading voice with the right-leaning Manhattan Institute.

Matt Labash, a longtime writer for the Weekly Standard, said that because of Palin’s frequent appeals to victimhood and group grievance, “She’s becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska edition.”

Conservative intellectuals, while having scant ability to drive large blocs of votes on their own, traditionally have played an outsize role in the early stages of Republican nominating contests. Their approval has lent credence to politicians from Ronald Reagan onward hoping to portray themselves as faithful adherents to an idea-driven conservative movement.

This year, the conservative intelligentsia doesn’t just tend to dislike Palin — many fear that her rise would represent the triumph of an intellectually empty brand of populism and the death of ideas as an engine of the right.

“This is a problem for the movement,” said Will about what Palin represents. “For conservatism, because it is a creedal movement, this is a disease to which it is susceptible.”

The line of modern conservatism that can be traced back to National Review founder William F. Buckley would be broken by Palin, Will said.

“There’s no Reagan without Goldwater, no Goldwater without National Review and no National Review without Buckley — and the contrast between he and Ms. Palin is obvious.”

Asked if the GOP would remain the party of ideas if Palin captures the nomination, Will said: “The answer is emphatically no.” (Related: Liberals like Palin candidacy)

Columnist Charles Krauthammer, without talking about Palin specifically, noted that “there’s healthy and unhealthy populism,” and there is concern about the rise of the latter.

“When populism becomes purely anti-intellectual, it can become unhealthy and destructive,” said Krauthammer.

Wehner, now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, cited the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous 1980 declaration that the GOP had become “a party of ideas.”

“Conservatives are very proud of that,” Wehner said. “But she seems at best disinterested in ideas or least lacks the ability to articulate any philosophical justification for them. She relies instead on shallow talking points.”

Does Palin care about what conservative commentators say about her? So far, the answer would appear to be no.